The Communication courses are designed to help you develop many of the competencies you need for a career in mass communication and/or organizational communication. Our communications curriculum is organized into two tracks, or concentrations, within the communications field — Communication Studies and Mass Communication. The Communication Studies track combines approaches from the social sciences and humanities to focus on communication at intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, team, and organizational levels. This track will introduce you to the theories, rhetoric, symbolism, media, and effects of human communication. The Mass Communication track emphasizes the technology and techniques through which significant numbers of people are exposed to messages created by professional and quasi-professional communicators.

This course builds on other communication courses. You will learn to apply various skills that you have developed in other courses, including the ability to analyze an audience and the context of the communication in an intercultural encounter. Likewise, skill and insights into message development and the ways in which different groups receive and interpret messages will take on new meaning when applied in an intercultural context. Much of the information in this course will refer back to the pioneering work of Hofstede and his cultural classifications. Geert Hofstede is one of the foremost influential scholars in the discipline of cultural studies, particularly organizational culture. His pioneering work, such as the cultural dimensions theory, has been the basis for subsequent research and the growth of the field and understanding of how members of differing cultures interact.

Introduction to Communication Science explores some of the basic theories, models and concepts from the fields of mass, interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. The course begins with a consideration of several basic models, subsequently progressing to the history of communication theory, linear effect-oriented theories, the reception approach and, finally, exploring theories on the production and reinforcement of culture through communication.

This course provides an introduction to the human communication concentration in the communications major. This course will introduce you to communication principles, common communication practices, and a selection of theories to better understand the communication transactions that you experience in your daily life. The principles and practices that you study in this course will provide the foundation for further advanced studies and skills required in the communications major.